Angel Wings And Audible Kissing
by PopShop
Summary: But he's walking away from this one-night stand with more than just a smile on his face. -Oneshot-


_Giftfic for RazerAthane who's been feeling a little under the weather lately. I hope this makes you feel a little better._

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_**Hwoarang X Asuka.**

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Last night he held her hand, fireflies blinking fairy-lights around them, he was smiling that child smile, saying '_this only has to be what it needs to be_', with those alcohol-wide eyes, hazy and amazing and catching the world in a single glance. And she's fumbling and inarticulate, his hand a heavy line chain in her own, and words won't capture her thoughts, and she is too busy trying not to fall the fuck in love with him to deny him.

He's pulling her through hotel corridors, she thinks maybe she hears her name pressed against fever-pitch skin and he cannot hold her without destroying her.

He's knocking on doors, collecting sights and sounds, and he is a boy running down a hill, he can't breathe over his own laughter and he'll _keep_ running down because he can't fucking stop.

Pressing his ear against thin wood-panelling, heavy undertones of comfortable conversation and late night television, he's saying, '_Who's watching T.V at this hour?_' and then he's gone, a flash of fucking lightening, a hurricane trailing across dirt-cake carpets. She's humming the minor chords of some song, and she'd sigh, but it sounds like a promise of impending regret. Eyes warily tracing the carved wood patterns, she thinks maybe those people are _not_ lonely; they do not need bruise-lip kisses and insistent fingertips as reassurance.

They are not like her.

Like him.

Footsteps later and he's swallowing her soul from behind her manufactured smile. Heavy-weight hand pressing along the curve of her hip. He's saying, '_I like you_' because maybe love is a little too honest, his lips still burning fire through her skin as he's framing each syllable, deliberate and careful and he's too far and too close and he's fumbling his lines with his cotton wool mouth, but his fingertips dance a masterpiece across her stomach. And she wants to say, '_Shut up_', '_Keep talking_', she's ready to plead, '_Steal me_', but she is too strong for that, a heartbeat rhythm like hummingbird's winds pumping in her head and she's ready to say, '_I love you_' to keep this moment, its mind-numbing mix of sensation.

Through their bullshit symphony of, '_I want you, I need you, oh baby, oh, baby_', she thinks maybe she catches it, her own voice betraying her, her whisper-word confession that sounds like Armageddon in his ears.

He smiles his Christ-light smile against the skin of her throat.

He has done his damage.

He does not respond.

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Lying next to him, she feels like the little girl pulled through the looking glass. Counting spider-leg cracks crawling from the light fixtures, she's swallowing hard against an overwhelming sense of loneliness. His body heat soaking through her skin like acid, his breathing like white noise interference, she can still taste him on her lips, old cigarettes and waning attentions.

This boy offers her infinity, something never-ending, but it's so hollow, and she can't make any fucking sense of this. Feels like she's been abandoned, his fingertip kisses along the inside of her thigh, he seems like a ghost already.

Somewhere between his pretty smile, his vicious hands, between deserted corridors and off-white sheets, she knows now, she has fallen in love with the wonder-boy.

And he has forgotten her name.

With sleep tugging at the edges of her consciousness, she feels like she is suffocating, imagines his hands around her throat and swallows back her brilliant smile, her mind stumbling hazy-eyed and humbled around the scriptures of teenage idealism. Berates her wonderful imagination for welcoming words like, '_love_', offering them up with that secretive smile. Wonders vaguely how she manages to turn this one night-stand into something consequential, marvels at the teenage talent of falling in love with someone not so-self-involved enough to offer up a smile. A stranger boasting bright eyes and beautiful ideas and she's offering her heart, her clothes, her fucking fallen halo and she'll tie it up in dignity and self-respect.

And after her thoughts finally drift into silence, her breath some half-hearted lullaby in the darkness, he stays awake until dawn, thinking the _exact_ same things.

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Her back is against the bathroom door and she's tracing fingernails in sweeping spirals along the kiss-shaped bruises staining jaw lines and collar bones. A soft lip attempt to melt her knife-point edge, her sharper angles. With his breath along her skin, liquid fire lips spelling stories in the contours of her throat he said, '_You're too beautiful for this_'. Because words like, '_young_' and '_weak_' bleed from his vocabulary when she's smiling that shimmer-silk smile, times when he can see her butterfly pulse flutter against her skin.

This morning, she counts the treasure trail fingerprints he has mapped along the hollows of her ribcage. In the blinding bright spotlight of hotel bathrooms, she sees his bruising trail of destruction in breathtaking shades of dusk, their colours fading to midnight shades as she surveys the damage once more.

And in her mind, she's imagines photographs, old Polaroids of black and white, stylish and creative, blurring an artistic streak across his image brief human weakness held within. Block line borders framing cigarette smoke, a private armada of hollow-glass whiskey bottles. She sees him with flickers of ash in his hair, fading eyes counting the burning stars miles beyond them, edging a halo around her angel-face. Lips barely framing soft wool words, he's saying, '_If I leave enough evidence, they won't forget_' and he's closing his eyes against dizzying heights and her pretty pearl smile.

This boy who fears his anonymity, still grasping for flash bulbs and billboards with dirt-blood hands. But for now, until he holds the impossible safely within his jeans pocket, she is his testament, proof of his survival. How he conquers life one day at a time, her skin tarnished by the airy words of existentialism as they faded to heavy breath obsession and promised words of love neither of them believed.

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He's hunched on the bed, his head cradled in his hands, his mind a blurry impressionist masterpiece of something he should be feeling, something he can't understand.

He can't face her heaven-glow in the early morning light, presses his thumbs against his temples, he won't count his fingerprints pressed purple hues against the brutal white canvas of her skin.

She is behind him in a glinting flash of gold and angel wings whispering her fairytale sing-songs of reassurance.

But he is a young man, still barely existing. And last night her stole her heart, tore her body to ruins.

But she did not lose the battle.

She still hears his stupid-child words, seeking praise and necessity and asking for love, but not really. '_I'm gonna be the hero_,' he grumbled, childish petulance, insistence, turning that burning bulb smile to her saying, '_Are you gonna be my princess?_' And he wanted to be written into history books. He wanted to live forever, just not this time. He saw them as a fairy story, something permanent and comforting, and she saw his crumbling line of defense and tore his fucking castle to the ground.

'_I'm my own hero_,' and he's shaking his head for her silence, but she's still smiling and still talking, still painting his weakness in masterstrokes for the world to admire. '_You can't be everybody's hero. No doubt you fit someone's villain criteria_'.

Now she's leaning over him, whispering with something like she'd imagine conviction to be. Humming in her sherbet sweet tones she says, '_I love you_' and she almost laughs at the grin that tugs at the corners of his kiss-bruised lips.

He finally gets the punch-line.

He's saying, still smiling, '_But it's not going to last, right?_' But it's not a question, because he is already aware of the answer. His smirk still struggling to curl around her parting-shot, some bitter life-lesson she's breathing down his throat.

'_Exactly_,' she agrees, her bed-sheet couture pooling around her hips, her fingernails tracing along the scars on his back. '_Nothing lasts forever_'. Because '_nothing_' is exactly how he would class their relationship. A brief encounter in a hotel room, a muted collision of desperate kisses and broken fists. It was all nothing, and like the angel over his shoulder whispers, nothing lasts forever.

Lighting a new cigarette, blinking bruise-brimmed eyes against the rising sun, he's saying, '_In that case. I love you too_'.


End file.
